It was either a bold bid for peace or aclever propaganda ploy. Shadowed
by bodyguards in the venerable Mexico City Foreign Correspondents Club,
Guillermo Manuel Ungo, 51, president of El Salvador's Democratic
Revolutionary Front (F.D.R.), a leftist political alliance that
boycotted last March's elections, faced an overflow audience. Alongside
was Ana Guadalupe Martínez, a representative of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.), the Marxist-led organization that
unites the country's five guerrilla factions. Ungo and Martínez
announced that their groups had offered to begin unconditional direct
negotiations with...